


Them

by autisticblueteam



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Agender Agent Maine, Agender Character, Asexual The Meta | Agent Maine, Gen, Non-binary Agent Connecticut, Non-binary character, RvB Trans Week, Spartan Agent Maine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 19:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15420039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autisticblueteam/pseuds/autisticblueteam
Summary: They were Mateja. Spartan. Maine. Freelancer. Them. Nothing more. Nothing less.





	Them

**Author's Note:**

> Written for trans rvb week! This includes both Agender Maine and non-binary Connie.

Maine had always been just… Maine.

No, that wasn’t true. Before Freelancer, they were Mateja-A057. Before Spartan, they were Mateja… something. That name had been lost in the years since.

But they had always just been _them._

Irritating, how hard that was to articulate.

 

SPARTAN hadn’t exactly taught them about the intricacies of gender.

Camp Currahee had been all about rigorous physical training. Drills. Survival. Drills. Fighting. Teamwork. Equipment maintenance. Specialised skills. Everything they need to fight a war. Nothing that they needed to be individuals. To know who they were.

Maine had never questioned it.

See, the higher-ups had always liked Maine.

Tallest in Alpha Company—almost 6’ even by the age of thirteen. Strongest, by far. Didn’t ask questions. Did as they were ordered. Took well to non-verbal communication. Leaned into looking out for the others.

They were everything they wanted in a Spartan and Maine—quiet, obedient Mateja-A057—had puffed up with pride when they were selected to become a Headhunter. Being a Spartan had given them a sense of… belonging. Here, their lack of words didn’t matter. Here, they could make a difference. Here, they were valued.

Mateja-A057. Spartan. Headhunter.

That was how they quantified themself.

It wasn’t as if they were unaware of the way they were referred to as ‘boy’. At home, before the glassing, they hadn’t be referred to as much of anything and that had suited them, just fine. Boys, girls—they knew what it meant, were used to the ‘he’ and ‘him’ and ‘his’, but it had always mattered so little. They were Spartans first and always.

 _They_ were a Spartan, first and always.

With their partner—Kana, a girl who had been matched specially with them after hours of intensive interviews—they were simply Mateja. Spending all your time with one person, hours or days or weeks without extended contact with another, there was no need for pronouns or gendered terms. Kana was decisively, unashamedly _her_ , a girl and then a woman, but Maine… was Mateja.

Kana never pushed them to be more than that. Just like she never pushed them to talk more than needed. Or change _how_ they spoke. Kana was a good friend, a good partner, a good Spartan.

And like all good Spartans they knew, she died for the war.

And, when the grief they showed became violent and too _unbecoming_ of a Spartan, when the new partner they tried to offer wasn’t like her, they were shipped away to Freelancer.

 

At Freelancer, they weren’t Mateja-A057. They were Agent Maine.

People talked about them. Hard to miss a Spartan, let alone one ducking through almost every doorway and nearly scraping their head on any room with a low ceiling. Quiet and unwittingly imposing, most of the other Freelancers gave them a wide berth. Besides the chatter, rumours.

It had been years since they heard pronouns used quiet so liberally. Years since they’d heard themself called ‘he’ or ‘man’ or anything but Mateja for any extended period of time.

Where it had never bothered them before, somehow it began to grate at them.

They were Mateja. Spartan. Maine. Freelancer. _Them._ Nothing more. Nothing less.

But they’d never been taught about the concept.

And words had never come easily.

So they said nothing.

 

The first time they heard ‘they’ used as a pronoun was Connie, the day she arrived on the ship.

They’d long since encountered the idea of being trans through South, loud and proud and unashamed of who she was. But as Connie made her introductions, they encountered another concept they had been unfamiliar with.

“I’m non-binary,” she said, casually and openly in the midst of her less formal introduction. The one away from the Director and the mission plans that had come upon her arrival. “So… she or they and no explicitly gendered language, please. If I come up around people I don’t know, it’s always ‘they’,” she’d finished, before moving on and becoming wrapped up in the room, the banter, the conversation that Maine still hadn’t found a place in.

They thought about what she’d said for the rest of the night.

Non-binary. They knew what ‘binary’ meant in a certain context—binary code—but not in _this_ context. Still, it wasn’t hard to make the connection between binary, meaning two, and the genders they had become accustomed to.

So, non-binary…

Absence of binary? Not… part of the binary?

That wasn’t a concept they’d heard of. Not in words.

Was that an option?

It was at the back of their mind for days before they had chance to talk to Connie alone. They’d been scheduled for a training session together. Connie held her own damn well in a fight, small and nimble enough to duck and dodge around their strength and swings. Come out almost evenly matched, in the end. Always had trouble with small, fast targets.

After the session was over, they were alone in the locker room as they de-suited. Maine used it more as a chance to run basic maintenance. Preferred to stay in their armour. Liked to check it over themself.

Connie was across the way, helmet off and the top half of her armour already put away. Words were hard. Starting conversation was harder. By the time they had the words planned out, she was down to her undersuit.

“Connecticut?”

She looked up. “Yeah, Maine? And you can call me Connie, less of a mouthful.”

“Right.” They grunted softly, reoriented their words. “…non-binary. What’s that mean? Have… a guess. But…”

“Oh, you don’t—?” Connie said, tilting her head. Maine shook their head. There was a flash of something across Connie’s face—a look they would come to know it as the look that indicated she knew more than she was letting on—before she spun to lean against her locker. “It… means a lot of things, I suppose. For lots of people. But on broad terms… it means you aren’t a man or a woman.”

Maine nodded. That was what it had sounded like.

“More specifically… it covers a broad range of genders that sit outside of the binary. Some people have more specific words, others don’t. It’s a big spectrum,” she continued, fingers idly tapping against her palm. “For me… I hold some connection to womanhood but I’m not a woman. For others… there’s a complete disconnect from binary gender at all. Some even feel they don’t have a gender—term for that is agender.”

Something clicked.

Agender.

Not having a gender.

It _clicked._

There must have been something in the look on their face because Connie smiled at them, tilted her head. “Maine?”

“…agender.” The word flowed surprisingly well from their tongue. Somehow that affirmed it more. “Think… that’s me.”

“That can be you,” she said. A simple statement, but a validation. “Do you want to talk about it? Sounds like you haven’t been exposed to this stuff much. I might be able to fill some other blanks for you, too.”

“…like that,” they said. Nodded. “Okay. Talking’s… hard. To warn.”

“You can type or sign or whatever you want to do,” Connie said, passing another smile their way as she dragged off her undersuit and pulled on the standard issue civvies. “Come on, the rec room should be empty.”

Maine followed her to the rec room.

Sat on the floor by the sofa, still in full armour besides their helmet, whilst Connie in her brown-themed civvies curled up in the corner of it and talked to them. Taught them about how gender was more than just being a man or a woman, in a way that they wished they’d been taught before. Taught them about sexuality, another topic that SPARTAN never saw fit to broach when most of them were sent off to die at such a young age.

They learned about gender and sexuality and in them, they learned about themself. The more she talked, the more clicked into place. The more feelings they’d had for years were explained.

They were Maine. Mateja-A057. _Them._

They were agender and asexual.

And that was okay.


End file.
